Splunk Enterprise 6 Brings Big Data to Business Users

Splunk announced Splunk Enterprise 6, a new version of its flagship machine data platform that helps bring big data analytics to business users.

LAS VEGAS--Splunk, a big data player that provides a software platform for real-time operational intelligence, announced the general availability of Splunk Enterprise 6, the latest version of the company’s platform for machine data.

Splunk Enterprise 6 delivers powerful and fast analytics, up to 1,000 times faster than previous versions, and patent-pending technology designed to quickly unlock the value of machine data to IT and business users. Splunk announced Splunk Enterprise 6 at its Splunk Worldwide Users’ Conference, Splunk .conf2013, here on Oct. 1.

Splunk has become a leading player in the big data space as it produces software for searching, monitoring and analyzing machine-generated big data, via a Web-style interface. Splunk captures, indexes and correlates real-time data in a searchable repository from which it can generate graphs, reports, alerts, dashboards and visualizations. Splunk aims to make machine data accessible across an organization and identifies data patterns, provides metrics, diagnoses problems and provides intelligence for business operation.

Sanjay Mehta, vice president of product marketing at Splunk, told eWEEK Splunk Enterprise 6 introduces three innovations that make analytics dramatically faster and easier for existing users. These breakthroughs also open up the value of gaining insights from machine data to an entirely new audience of business users.

The first of the new innovations is a new pivot interface. “We take it a step further and make it very flexible,” he said. “We also make machine data more meaningful through modeling.”

Mehta said Pivot opens up the power of analytics to non-technical business users and analysts with a simple drag-and-drop interface to explore, manipulate and visualize data. This includes the ability to click and drag prebuilt visualizations and quickly build complex queries and reports without learning a query language.

“Think of it as the Excel pivot paradigm with a lot more interactivity,” said Divanny Lamas, product manager at Splunk.

“Too many organizations are still struggling with a data divide between IT and the business,” said Splunk Chairman and CEO Godfrey Sullivan, in a statement. “At Splunk, we understand that the most successful organizations in the world give equal access to the data, regardless of skill level, to drive smart decisions that have true business impact. This is what inspired our product team to build Splunk Enterprise 6. We believe that everyone in the organization, from the system administrator to the C-level executive, should be empowered to find that ‘aha’ moment. Splunk Enterprise 6 bridges the data divide and unifies IT and business users around the tremendous value and ROI to be found in machine data.”